The Police Force.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19986, 22 July 1930, Page 10

The Police Force.

In its appointment of the new Commissioner of Police the Government has chosen not to break the custom, which has been followed for many years now, of relying on knowledge and experience gained in the Police Force. If this is the best way of filling the office, then there is no reason to doubt that the personal choice has been well made; but it is not certain that it is the best way. While the knowledge and experience a policeman gains in his progress through the Force are valuable, it by no means follows that the routine training and the outlook developed in the course of it are the best, or even good, qualifications for high administrative office in the Force. Relations between police and public have changed considerably, and are still changing. The legislative craze for creating new offences, and the practice of using policemen as agents of Government Departments in various sorts of public business, are two of the influences which have multiplied contacts between public and police; and it is impossible to say that friction has not increased. The public trusts the police as firmly as ever, but it has a closer knowledge now of police methods and the police miild/and the characteristic defects of both; and with this knowledge there has developed the feeling that the general public has little protection against police interference and against police methods. The link between the public and the police, the Minister for Justice, is insufficient, generally,'although no doubt adequate when grave disputes arise. Ministerial authority has not been fejt to guarantee the public against the danger that police methods may become tyrannical and the police mind, through its habit of recording efficiency in terms of convictions secured, an instrument of injustice. This wp the experience

in London not so long ago, and Lord Byng was placed in command of the police there in order to restore the lost reputation of the Force and regain public confidence. Police methods in New Zealand are not above criticism, as any lawyer knows, and as many others know, too; and the necessity for setting 1 them beyond reproach suggests that the Commissioner should be a man of wider outlook than one steeped in p;:lice routine can possibly acquire. He should be more broadly judicious than it is easy for policemen to be; he should be a competent administrator; and he should act as an effective intermediary between public and police. A civilian Commissioner is more likely to fulfil these conditions than an officer trained to look at the public and at the police from inside police uniform. But if the present system is to be retained, then it is even more necessary than it would otherwise be that the conditions of the service should be drastically changed and a second division created. This should be composed of men of high education, whose training should be along special lines. These should be the commissioned officers of the Force, from among whom the Commissioner would be appointed.